From the Vault: 1931 Aerial photo of Alamo Plaza

For this week’s installment of From the Vault, I decided to play File Cabinet Roulette. We have umpteen Alamo photos from various time periods, angles and distances. I chose this aerial photo of Alamo Plaza from 1931.

Our print of this photo is about this size, so all the landmarks are very tiny. The Alamo is center right with Alamo Plaza covering the lower portion of the photo. The flat horizontal oval is where the Cenotaph would eventually be erected. At this time, automobiles were still allowed to drive in front of the Alamo, and, it looks like, park in front too. To the right of the Alamo is H and H Coffee and the Schuler Sign Company. The Crockett Hotel is the tall building facing Bonham St. behind those two buildings. The Emily Morgan Hotel is the tall building to the left of the Alamo grounds.

The card with the photo says it was taken by Jack Specht, a staff photographer with the Light and published Dec. 11, 1931, but shot earlier that month. It was “taken from the Enna Jettick blimp, piloted by Lieut. W.D. Bruie.” According to this photo from November 1931 and this page, that blimp was a Goodyear blimp that travelled the country advertising Enna Jettick shoes.

In checking the Light microfilm for Dec. 11, 1931, we find out that indeed the blimp was on a national tour and that the photo was shot from an altitude of 600 feet. Unfortunately, a big chunk of the page, and with it part of the photo caption, are missing. The caption mentions something about a [Cro]ckett hotel project and the widening of a street, but without the missing words, I can’t say more.

The photo (with a dashed line drawn in to indicate the Alamo grounds) accompanies a story about the city awaiting a request for funds to assist in improving ”the park and street property in front of the Alamo.” The state had already completed negotiations for purchase “of the business property adjoining the Alamo chapel to the south,” i.e., the aforementioned H and H Coffee and Schuler Sign Company. Looking again at the photo: yep, gardens are now where those buildings were. According to the book Saving San Antonio, which includes a different photo from the same aerial shoot, the building directly behind these two buildings was a fire station. Part of it was removed with “much of its framework used for a DRT meeting hall after its donation by the city.”

The Light story goes on to say that “a plan drawn up by the city planner…call[s] for the closing of the narrow street in front of the Alamo and the construction of a park to extend from the front of the chapel to North Alamo street….[T]he project would call for an expenditure of about $50,000 by the city, in addition to the amount spent by the state.”

It ends with this interesting tidbit: “…the narrow street now running in front of the Alamo and Alamo street has no name and…it did not exist prior to 1917, when the flower islands were put in. The closing of this street has proved to be one of the stumbling blocks in…improvement and beautification.”

According to our archives, the street eventually known as “Alamo Plaza East” was “closed [in 1993] for the annual Christmas tree decorating and has been closed by the city since then for various reasons,” much to the ire of the DRT, which said the city made a contract with them in 1975 requiring the street to remain open. Then-Mayor Nelson Wolff said city attorneys determined that the contract wasn’t binding.

All that from a photo!

For more on the Alamo on mysa.com, check out the Alamo history page, which compiles a bunch of stories and links regarding the mission.